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Melchamites
The Melchamites are a sub-race of Humans that were enslaved by Dwarves long ago. Generations of harsh life underground and selective breeding fundamentally altered their nature and its legacy can be seen even now that the Melchamites walk free on the surface once more. Biology Melchamites are shockingly pale black haired humans. Their eye colour ranges from grey to white and their pupils have huge range of adaptation from pinhead dots in daylight to fully engulfing the iris in darkness, this belies their most notable difference from surface bred humans, the ability to see in the dark in a fashion akin to Dwarves or Nostari. They often appear stooped when standing next to other humans, a sign of their unusual skeletal structure, adapted to small narrow caves/mines and cramped habitats their joints can be dislocated and put back in place very easily and with little pain in addition to this Melchamites have a very high incidence of hypermobility in their joints. The Melchamites were often put to work in toxic mine environments and forced to live on a semi-poisonous diet only fit for the famously resilient Dwarves, those that survived passed this trait onto their progeny. History Originally a nomadic race of humans inhabiting what is now westermost Wüülzian and the north east of the Mandovan Empire, their encounters with the growing Dwarven kingdoms did not end favourably for them, ending in their near total enslavement and being put to work in the most dangerous areas of dwarven mines. This state of affairs continued for millennia until the melchamites developed a system of unarmed combat that relied on the darkness of their habitat and taught it to one another, concealed from their masters as movements made while working or dancing. What followed was the beginning of a century of violence, uprisings, guerrilla wars and vicious reprisals, finally neither side was victorious or defeated, the Melchamites left the Dwarven tunnels and began their search for a homeland, finally settling amongst the Shadowports of Thrawn and founding Free Melcham which has since become the most stable of the shadowports. Culture Language The dwarven slave masters practiced "Getrik" on their slaves, the act of stitching lips together to prevent communication as a way to pacify the Melchamites and prevent rebellion, though it failed to stop the melchamites from communicating it had a deep and abiding affect on their language. Melchami, more commonly known as Gutspeech, is a difficult language formed by neccesity, the slaves were forced to speak primarily in sounds that can be more easily made without moving the lips and consequently Melchami is a language made up almost entirely of those sounds. When speaking common Melchamites often place unusual emphasis on sounds made without moving the lips, speak in a strange hoarse manner that comes more from the throat than the mouth and gesture only with their eyes, sometimes in lieu of finishing a sentence, a quirk that is the legacy of a people that were often physically bound and refused the right to speak.